After being delayed by months, data collected for a single night in January and released Wednesday shows that the homeless population in the Colorado Springs area appears to be on a downward trajectory in several key categories.

Most notably, the number of “unsheltered” people who live on the streets and sleep in vehicles, under bridges, in empty buildings or in urban camps dropped by nearly one-third this year over last year.

A tally of 259 people self-identified as being homeless during the Jan. 21-22 Point in Time and Housing Inventory Count. That’s 115 fewer people than last year and represents a 31% decline, according to the statistics.

It’s also the lowest number since 2015.

Of this year’s 259 unsheltered individuals, 41% said they had a serious mental illness, and 47% were addicted to substances.

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In total, homelessness decreased by 12% in El Paso County over last year, with 1,146 people considered both “sheltered,” meaning sleeping in emergency shelters and transitional housing, or “unsheltered” in uninhabitable places.

That’s 156 people less than the homeless population in 2023.

Using 56 volunteers this year and administered by the nonprofit Community Health Partnership for the Pikes Peak Continuum of Care, a group of homeless service providers, the survey is required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for communities as a condition for federal funding and to report to Congress but, according to HUD, is not a factor in how much Continuums of Care throughout the nation receive in funding.

The results are encouraging, said Colorado Springs Mayor Yemi Mobolade.

“This is the second year in a row we’ve seen decreasing numbers, and I believe this is a testament to the effectiveness of our community’s collaborative efforts to address homelessness in our city,” he said in a statement. “Despite these results, homelessness remains one of our enduring challenges. It is an issue that weighs heavily on our residents, business owners and our community.”

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The mayor is creating initiatives under a Homelessness Response Plan, as part of an updated strategic plan that will be unveiled next month. Supportive services, preventive measures and more affordable housing are among the priorities, said Katie Sunderlin, the city’s acting chief housing officer.

Residents have until Monday, Sept. 2 to say what they’d like to see included in the plan at ColoradoSprings.govhttps://coloradosprings.gov/2024HomelessnessResponse.

What’s concerning, Sunderlin said, is that the number of homeless families increased by 12% in this year’s count, with 48 more people who are part of a family unit saying they were homeless.

Families tend to hide during the process, officials say, as parents often are afraid their children might be removed from their care during what is a difficult time. But in Colorado, child protective services does not take away children due to homelessness.

“More robust family sheltering” is a need identified in the city’s response plan, Sunderlin said, and the city probably will use $1.1 million of federal pandemic-relief money it received to help create a noncongregate shelter of individual temporary quarters for families.

The Salvation Army’s Family Hope Center, which has 31 family suites and a total of 186 bunkbeds, is the city’s primary shelter for families who are homeless.

Also, Sunderlin said, families often stay with relatives or friends or in motels, which are not considered as homeless for the Point in Time survey, but are counted under the federal McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, which annually checks homelessness among school-age children to ensure equal access to education.

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The Point in Time provides a snapshot on a given winter night of the county’s status but isn’t necessarily an accurate depiction of homelessness, some point out. For example, the survey does not count the number of homeless people who are in institutions such as the county jail, hospitals or treatment facilities on the night the census is taken. The number of homeless people staying in the county jail during this year’s census topped 300.

In the Pikes Peak region, nearly 4,200 individuals used emergency homeless shelters or transitional housing last year, according to the Continuum of Care data reported to HUD. A Homeless Management Information System, which tracks services provided from many but not all providers, reported that 4,660 households representing 5,391 people received homelessness-related services from Oct. 1, 2021, to Sept. 30, 2022, the most recent data available.

“There are many factors that contribute to the Point in Time count, which account for fluctuations year over year — weather, volunteer efforts, willingness of participants to share information and other factors that may influence the final count,” said Kristy Milligan, CEO of Westside Cares. The nonprofit consortium of churches provides free food, clothes, bus passes, rent assistance, referrals and other programs for people who are homeless.

The decreases in the Point in Time are an indication that the community has been effective in implementing “multiple and diverse interventions to prevent and end homelessness,” Milligan said. Those efforts range from offering different types of rehousing programs to a plethora of direct services to work opportunities.

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One big success of the Pikes Peak Continuum of Care, she said, is that the retention rate of permanent housing communitywide was 94.7% for 2023.

“Our partners also did a tremendous job of increasing exits from homelessness through street outreach in 2023,” Milligan said.

Homelessness among military veterans and youth also declined in this year’s Point in Time headcount.

Changes in HUD policies this year combined race and ethnicity categories and increased the number of racial categories from six to 15.

El Paso County’s results continue to show overrepresentation of traditionally marginalized communities, which Milligan said “speaks to the need for additional and diverse interventions” for Black, American Indian, Indigenous and Alaskan Native people who are homeless.

Twice or nearly twice the percentage of people who reported a race in those categories were homeless, compared with the U.S. Census Bureau population statistics for El Paso County.

Delays in releasing the local data were due to HUD changes as well as the need to ensure the accuracy of the reporting, according to the Pikes Peak Continuum of Care.

The Denver-area Point in Time count, which covers Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Broomfield, Denver, Douglas and Jefferson counties, was released Aug. 14 and shows a 10% increase this year in the overall homeless population, for a total of 9,977 people.

Some estimate the area sees 30,000 people who are homeless throughout the year, according to a release from the Metro Denver Homeless Initiative.

Contact the writer: 719-476-1656.

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